Hawkers in New Market were on Tuesday given another fortnight to follow the one-third rule and vacate the roads as the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) chucked the Wednesday deadline it had set earlier following resistance from hawkers.
The one-third rule means that hawkers must restrict their stalls within a third of the width of the pavement and leave the rest free for pedestrians. The rule is part of the street vending rules framed by the state government.
The hawkers in New Market have also been told to vacate the roads.
The street vending rules also say that hawkers cannot set up a stall on any road, but there are multiple stalls of hawkers on the road surface at Humayun Place, Bertram Street and Lindsay Street.
On Tuesday, a police team and a hawker leader who were announcing the rules and the deadline were gheraoed by hawkers. Many of the hawkers later told The Telegraph that there were about 900 hawkers on the roads around New Market and there was not enough space on pavements to accommodate all of them.
On Wednesday, the KMC decided to extend the deadline. “The hawkers came and told us about their problem. They asked for a month to adhere to the rules, but we have given them fifteen days,” said Debashis Kumar, the KMC mayoral council member who is handling hawker-related issues.
“The hawkers have promised to follow the rules,” said Kumar, the co-chairperson of Kolkata’s town vending committee.
The vending committee — formed under the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act 2014 and made up of street vendors, civic officials, NGOs and cops, among others — has also decided to free the roads around New Market. The town vending committee is the sole authority to decide how to regulate street vendors in a town or city.
After a nod from the committee, the police and the KMC had drawn yellow lines on the pavements around New Market on the night of January 6, demarcating the space reserved for pedestrians. But hawkers continued to occupy more than one-third width of pavements in most places.
While the hawkers refused to move immediately, the shop owners in New Market and on the streets around the market kept the stores closed from 11am to 3pm on Wednesday as a mark of protest against hawkers occupying the roads and pavements. The shop owners took out a rally and later met mayor Firhad Hakim with their demands.